65 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
65 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
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AI Koans: (by Danny)
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A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the
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power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke
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sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
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understanding of what is going wrong."
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Knight turned the machine off and on.
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The machine worked.
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- - - - -
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One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a
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better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the
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pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following
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story-
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"One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to
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make a better garbage collector...
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- - - - -
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In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
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sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
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"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
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"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
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"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play"
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Minsky shut his eyes,
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"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
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"So that the room will be empty."
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At that momment, Sussman was enlightened.
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- - - - -
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A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
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Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
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true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
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Lisp". Almost before the student had finshed his question, Greenblatt
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shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
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- - - - -
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A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his
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morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
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the outsider,"because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper
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that was offered him and put it into the toaster- "I wish the toaster to
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be happy too".
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Additional item from Craig Reynolds:
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A cocky novice once said to Stallman: "I can guess why the editor is
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called Emacs, but why is the justifier called Bolio?". Stallman replied
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forcefully, "Names are but names, `Emac & Bolio's` is the name of a con-
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fectionary shop in Boston-town. Neither of these men had anything to do
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with the software."
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His question answered, yet unanswered, the novice turned to go, but
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Stallman called to him, "Neither Emac or Bolio had anything to do with
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the ice cream shop, either."
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Yes, you guested it, an ice cream koan.
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